Category: The Big Little Move

Given my massive break from blogging, I thought the best way to jump back in would be to break down all the myths and fantasies around tiny house living. Yes, we’ve all seen it glorified, whimsified and beautified. Heck, I’m sure I even did some of it (the purging was really the best part, to be honest). But in all honesty, there is so much that people leave out when they talk up the small house living thing.

It’s so hard to even decide where to begin, it’s been horse-kicking-me-in-the-gut painful. But maybe I’ll start with the basics.

First word of advice, if you’re a family of five with a large dog in tow, don’t attempt to live in 672 square feet of house. Just don’t even bother. It’s doable, but it’s painful. It’s especially excruciating when everyone (and I mean everyone except the dog) breaks out with hand foot mouth disease the first month of living in said tiny house. If you take massive infectious diseases out of the picture, then you’re just dealing with the day-to-day. But still, it’s not easy. Case in point:

As a woman, you never have a moment of privacy. So forget about taking care of your monthly business in private when the bathroom spills into the only hallway, and into the only bedroom.

There’s no place to hide. Like ever. Unless you plan on hanging with the rats in the attic or the mice in the basement, the only other way to disappear is to literally disappear and hope you’re kids don’t hear you sneaking out or hiding in the loft (aka, your bedroom).

You never have a moment of privacy. If you have to take care of your own said business, just pretend that everyone else in the house has ear plugs and can’t hear you taking care of business in the bathroom that spills into the hallway (with a door that’s basically see through). Showering in privacy is a joke in our house.

Sure, you can’t lose your kids in such a small house, but sometimes it would be nice. Actually, I did lose them once. They were hiding in the closet and it sounded like they had escaped and were hiding in a secret passage. Unfortunately our house is too small for any secrets. Or passages.

If you fart everyone knows it was you. So forget about enjoying all the taquerias that are a stone’s throw away.

I think the biggest thing that drives me bonkers is that I still have to clean just as much. I mean, before we moved I FANTASIZED about all the cleaning that would just disappear! But it didn’t. Like at all. Why? Well, we moved into a smaller house, we didn’t get rid of any people. Sure, we got rid of stuff, but we are still exploding out of this house. We are people who wear clothes (shocking, I know). The kids also have all their little toys and books. And they are toddlers. God bless them, but they aren’t the best at picking up yet. Then there is the “one closet thing.” Yes, one closet for five people. Even if I make my best attempt to clean up the place, once the kids are down I have nowhere to hang up my clothes or put my dirty laundry.

So yes, I fantasize daily about living in another house. One that I can host in. One where I might lose a kid or two (or three). One that would actually give raise my heart rate as I make my way from my bedroom — wait, one that has a bedroom for me! — to the kitchen.

But — and this is a big but — I wouldn’t change our move for the world. We stumbled upon the best neighborhood in the most amazing city. We are on hugging terms with our neighbors. One neighbor’s daughters (twin daughter) watch my boys, the other neighbor takes my dog on doggy play dates. And yet another walks back from the market with me. And they all keep an eye on the house when we are gone. We found such a great community here and while it’s often challenging (like today, when 3 out of 5 of us are sick), it’s where we are today.

With the move quickly approaching, we are getting serious about our purging efforts. Every time I look around at all of our stuff, I can’t possibly imagine how we’ll fit it in to our tiny house – and this coming from a family who doesn’t have a lot of stuff given we have way more than I thought we did. We keep the knick-knacks to a minimum, but there are still some areas that are a little out of control or take a lot of space, like the kitchen (I love to cook), and my closet (I love to shop).

One of my fellow bloggers and friend, Angela of BirdieBelle (she’s hilarious, you must read her blog), is working on a deep purge too and asked how I’m tackling it. Do I do storage? How do I decide what goes and what stays? It was such a good question that I thought I’d expand my answer and share with all of you who are no-doubt tackling a little spring cleaning too. The below are 5 things I feel have helped us through this process. We didn’t really know where to begin when it started, but all of these elements came to us as we went about the purge and it has made a huge difference in chipping away at it. Hopefully it will help you too.

A mix of long-term storage and things we already packed up.

Keep Only What Brings You Joy. This is a rule that a friend shared with me early on in the process. She read it somewhere, so I’m sorry I can’t reference where it came from, but it makes sense, doesn’t it? The trick is to make sure that both you and your partner find joy in something.

As we emptied out our kitchen cabinets we came across one section with an endless amount of vases. It was a little ridiculous and embarrassing. The good thing is that we didn’t actually purchase the vases – many were given to us as gifts or hand-me-downs. But many of them I hardly used as I always have my go-to vases (just as I do in my closet… funny how that works, eh?). Suffice to say we donated most of our vases and only kept a few that we both really like.

Keep What You Know You’ll Use Later. The thought of repurchasing all of our wonderful wine glasses, martini glasses and beer glasses made my stomach turn. I love hosting parties (even with young kids, an epic dinner party without a sitter is totally doable!) and while I inevitably always break one of the glasses at said dinner party, I still want to look forward to hosting another dinner party in the future without the financial burden of repurchasing our wonderful glasses. The same goes for some beautiful serving platters as well. And part of our 16-place settings, as it doesn’t make sense for us to keep all 16 in the cupboard when we’ll likely only be able to have 2-4 guests over at any given time (and we’d have to eat on the floor…). So we are keeping 6 place settings, 6 juice glasses, 6 water glasses and 4 wine glasses (two juice glasses can always be used for wine if needed!) available for everyday use. Everything else that we love are in boxes market “LT” for Long Term Storage.

Consider the Long Term Borrow. This can’t work for everyone, but stop and ask your friends if they’d like to borrow larger furniture items you really love. We are so lucky that a few of our favorite pieces will be kept out of storage and in our friend’s epic new farm house they’ve been restoring. They’re doing the opposite of us, so it made perfect sense for them to take a bed, nightstands, a couch (that we love!!), and a coffetable. They are going to purchase a few items from us to, but we basically invited them over to “go shopping” and both sides are more than pleased with the situation. They are upsizing considerably and we are doing the opposite, so it’s a financial win-win.

Wardrobe Capsule Your Closet. Last week my friend sent me a link that has been L I F E C H A N G I N G. The second I clicked through and read the post about wardrobe capsules, it was as if a light blub went on and I’ll never look back at my disorganized and stuffed-to the-gills closet. That very night I threw on a robe and took everything out of my 1.5 closets and tried on everything I owned and purged. It felt so good. I was focused and determined. I am still giving away some epic pieces to friends and the rest I will sell (and I’m still not fully done purging). I was also able to return pieces that I purchased 1.5 years ago but hardly wore or didn’t wear at all, so feeling pretty proud of myself there.

What is a wardrobe capsule? You can find out here on Un-Fancy, but basically it’s breaking down your wardrobe into 4 seasons and making a capsule for each. You only keep your current capsule in your closet while the other three are stored under your bed (which to me sounds much better than the garage, a basement, or an attic) and you rotate said capsules every three months with the seasons. At the end of each capsule you expire anything that is worn out and you can replace it at the end of the season (on sale!) or the following season. Some items obviously carry over from season to season, but it makes it easier to know what you have in your closet and makes purchasing items that much easier.

Personally, I have always been known to rock a “uniform.” It’s a fairly basic approach to fashion and involves lots of layers. This is my style and it always will be. It’s functional but it’s me. Knowing this about myself, after I read the blog I was suddenly allowed to get rid of all the things in my closet I was trying to be. Sounds weird, but it’s true. All those bright, multi-colored pieces? Gone. I am a neutrals girl with understated accent pieces. So take a gander at Un-Fancy and let me know if you tackle this project, because it has been a life-changer, game-changer, everything-changer and it’s only been one week. Simply put, I feel free again and it gives me a clean lens to look at the rest of my purging with. Don’t use or it don’t care for it? Then it’s gone.

Avoid Storage Units. If at all humanly possibly, avoid these because they are a waste of money and you’ll end up taking items there over time and filling it up so much that you’ll need a bigger unit. Just get rid of anything that you’re not using. If you don’t have room for it, can’t coordinate a long-term borrow, then sell it. It’s as simple as that. There is no reason to pay someone else to hang on to your stuff because likely you’ll forget about it and it’s basically you flushing money down the toilet every month. You’d be better off selling it or donating it, because in either case it’s money back in your pocket instead of it seeping out of your bank account every month.

This past week our BIG, little move started to get real. Partly because I announced it to y’all and partly because we have four more weeks before we move, minus one whole week (weekend included) where we’ll be traveling.

In the past month or so I’ve slowly been chipping away in various zones: first the vases then the sideboard, my closet – twice so far – and the books once. In doing this I’ve realized that some areas – ahem, my closet – will take at least four passes to downsize. Minimum. If this move weren’t forcing us to downsize so extensively, I’m not sure that I’d be so aggressive with the purge. I probably would give my closet the passive pass through of “cleaning it out” that I do every six months or so. You know, that closet organization pseudo purge where you tell yourself you’re going to get rid of everything you haven’t worn in the last year but it really just moves to a pile that sits in the corner and then finds its way back into your closet because a few weeks after looking at it on the floor you decide that it really does belong in your closet. You know, that kind of passive purge?

This past week I switched from passive to aggressive (not to be mistaken with passive aggressive, because it is anything but). We got real aggressive. Like S U P E R aggressive. The week started off with an email to our neighbors stating all the things we are giving away for free and the things we are selling. You should have seen the response. It was amazing. We were able to get rid of a lot on the list, so it worked out great. We only have a few items left (as far as I can tell now) that are unspoken for.

This weekend we started to do some actual packing. Mr. M and I agreed that we would only keep things we both love. So the more questionable items end up being a conversation that goes a little something like this:

“Where did we get it?”

“Costa Rica, I think.”

“Who gave it to us?”

“I bought it for you.”

“Do you even like it?”

“I hate it…” or, “I really don’t care for it.”

“Honey, why do we even have these? We’ve not used these 16 cups and saucers. Like ever.”

“But they match our dishes! And what if we have a dinner party where people actually want coffee or tea after dinner instead of more alcohol?”

“That is never going to happen. They’re gone.” (The dishes, not the friends).

And off they went. All 16 wonderfully white and perfectly matched, brand new cups and saucers. Someone will find them at our local Salvation Army and they will be a steal.

While we’re at it, since our little house won’t really have room for us to throw the dinner parties that I love to throw for the Whiskey Town Whores (don’t ask…) or our Magnolia friends, we’re putting much of our kitchen into long-term storage. This means all of our fancy wine, beer and martini glasses, a good number of our every day glasses and the majority of our daily dishes and serving bowls and platters will be safely tucked away for the next few years. This was an easy compromise for the both of us because it doesn’t make sense to repurchase all these items that we know we’ll need again in the future. What’s also good is that through this process of packing things up for the long-term storage pile, we’re being extremely thoughtful of what we end up putting there. So things that don’t meet the “brings us joy” criteria immediately get put into the donation pile for one of our weekly trips.

Admittedly I’ve felt myself become a little overwhelmed during parts of this. Part of me is overwhelmed because I can’t believe the stuff I’m finding after living here for the past 4.5 years. Stuff I haven’t seen since before we moved in. Stuff that I don’t even care for. The other half of me is overwhelmed because I look around and think of all the things we still have to go through! I feel as though we live fairly minimally, but then sometimes I don’t. Perhaps we just hide it well.

For example, when we started to go through our limited CD collection, I gave my dad a good chunk of our collection and Mr. M was like, “You’re giving him Grateful Dead? Skeletons in the closet!? I love that album!” Oh really? Then why has it been sitting in this crate in the basement since we moved in? We don’t even have a real CD player. You see, we use Sonos and stream everything.

I guess some things will take a few passes before we realize that items that sit in our cupboards or basement for the past four years without us even realizing it, probably need to get the boot. And that’s fine. I’d rather take the time to think about some pieces than to just throw them out because of the possibility that we’ll actually drink coffee after a dinner party… when we’re in our sixties. By then I’ll probably want cute mismatched ones or will have inherited my great grandmother’s wonderfully vintage and mismatched collection anyways.